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Orthodox Christian fasting (OF) incorporates voluntary abstention from specific foods for 180-200 days per year. Meat eating and OF cannot coexist: meat eating negates fasting and fasting excludes meat eating (incompatible concepts). In this article, the possible medical reasons for the exclusion of meat from the OF are presented and commented.
Keywords: meat, medicine, Orthodox Christian fasting, religious.
INTRODUCTION
Orthodox Christian fasting (OF), which incorporates voluntary abstention from specific foods for 180-200 days per year, is an ancient ecclesiastical ordinance (1, 2). The Holy Tradition (written and oral) of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church, while advising avoidance of olive oil, meat, fish, milk, and dairy products every Wednesday and Friday throughout the year, additionally includes four principal fasting periods per year when meat as well as dairy products and eggs are forbidden. These take place: 1) for a period of 40 days preceding Christmas, 2) for a period of 48 days preceding Easter (Lent), 3) for a variable period from 8 to 42 days, known as the Apostles’ Fast or the Fast of Peter and Paul, and 4) for a total of 15 days in August (Assumption of the Virgin Mary). Meanwhile, seafood such as shrimp, squid, cuttlefish, octopus, lobster, crab, and snails are allowed on all fasting days throughout the year (1, 2). It is of note that strict observance of OF relates not only to the avoidance of particular foods on specific days and time periods, but also to restrictions on the quantity of the permitted foods.
It can thus been seen that the Orthodox Christian Church, through its numerous fasting practices incorporating a periodic vegetarian diet (including vegetables, legumes, nuts, fruits, olives, bread, snails, and seafood), and its minimization of meat eating essentially proposes a variant of vegetarianism, thus constituting one type of the Mediterranean diet (2, 3). In sum, the Orthodox Christian Church diet includes annually: a) a low dietary intake of animal protein, total fat, saturated fatty acids (SFAs), and trans fatty acids, mainly through limited meat consumption, and b) a very high dietary intake of plant protein, fiber, vitamins and antioxidant substances, monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) from wholegrain cereals, fruit, vegetables, legumes, seafood, nuts, tahini, and olive oil.
According to the Orthodox Christian Patristic Tradition, the goal of OF is not a victory over the body (Greek: σωματοκτόνος), but a victory over the passions (Greek: παθοκτόνος) (1); what is important is not a healthy body, but a sanctified body. Regarding the consumption of meat, the principal reason for its exclusion from the OF diet is related to the spiritual achievements of fasting (as gaining mastery over oneself and conquering the passions of the flesh) (1) and, more specifically, with the curbing of erotic desires of the flesh. The real reason is clearly described in The Rudder (Pedalion) (Greek: Πηδάλιον), a collection of texts of the Orthodox Canon law, first printed and published 1800 AD. In particular, the first footnote of the 51st Apostolic canon of The Rudder reports that “eating meat, the most fatty food among all foods, is opposed to the purpose of monasticism, which is wisdom and virginity, by tickling the flesh and raising a war of wanton appetites and desires against the soul” (Greek fragment: “Ἡ δὲ τοῦ κρὲατος βρῶσις λυπαρωτάτη οὖσα ἀπό ὅλα τά φαγητά, ἑπομένως ἐναντιώνεται εἰς τόν σωφροσύνην καί παρθενίαν, ταὐτόν εἰπεῖν, ἐναντιώνεται εἰς τόν σκοπόν καί τό τέλος αὐτό, μέ τό νά γαργαλίζῃ τήν σάρκα.Although this footnote describes just one of the three reasons for monks’ compulsory abstinence from eating meat (the other two being the ancient tradition of the Orthodox Church and the challenge of scandal), meat is recognized as the fattiest of all foods activating human passions, namely the passion of prostitution characterized by any act of sexual instinct, whose main and sole purpose is pleasure (pathological use of sexuality or sexual instinct or libido). Thus, meat consumption during OF would be an obstacle to the body’s self-control, abstinence from passionate desires and pleasures, humility of the flesh and curbing of inborn sexual appetite; in other words, it would be contrary to the purposes of OF, not only for monks but every Orthodox Christian. Through fasting, Orthodox Christians also avoid the danger of abdominal “deification” (see Philippians 3:19) and therefore, protect their body from passions of the flesh, aroused mainly by gluttony and resulting in overeating (polyphagia or hyperphagia). In fact, in the Holy Bible and Orthodox Christian Patristic Tradition, polyphagia is not only the “mother” of prostitution or “the door of passions” (5) but moreover weakens human will, thus reducing resistance to every kind of pleasure and corruption.
